Before Contacting an Advisor, Read the Following:
- For a list of our Spring Creative Writing Courses, please view the email announcement that was sent out 10/7/24.
- For Spring 2025, if you have enrollment issues once your enrollment phase begins, please submit your question to our enrollment issues form. We will take a look at it and get back to you. Please also refer to our enrollment reminder email that talks about your enrollment period, phases and unit limits.
- Need help navigating enrollment through CalCentral? View the Enrollment FAQ for Students and the Enrollment Center guide.
- If you are inquiring about an English R1A or R1B course, please read the R1A or R1B policy overview before you email an English Major Advisor.
- If you want to declare the major, go to Declaring the Major. To double major, visit the L&S page to learn more about the process. To minor in English, visit the Minor page.
Email:
To email an advisor, please use english_advising@berkeley.edu. All UMAs check this email consistently Monday-Fridays.
-
Please do not email multiple advisors separately with the same question or form, as this leads to duplicated efforts.
Appointments and Drop-In Advising:
To schedule an appointment with an English Undergraduate Major Advisor, go to CalCentral. If you are not sure how to schedule an appointment, view the helpful Booking an Advising Appointment guide.
To view our drop-in hours hosted by Undergraduate Major Advisors and Peer Advisors, visit our drop-in advising hour calendar.
Undergraduate Major Advisors & In-Person Days:
Chloe Vreeland: Wednesdays and Thursday appointments can be attended in-person (Wheeler 319) or by this Zoom link. All other appointment days can be attended by this Zoom link.
Jacki Valadez: Mondays and Tuesdays, scheduled appointments can be attended in-person (Wheeler 319) or by this Zoom link.
Jasmine Valenzuela: Tuesdays and Wednesdays appointments can be attended in person (Wheeler 319). All other appointments can be attended by this Zoom link.
For Zoom appointments, we kindly ask that you have your camera on.
Peer Advising:
Peer Advisors share their knowledge of and experiences with English major courses, extracurriculars and student groups and campus resources. For specific degree requirements/degree checks, please book an appointment with Chloe, Jacki or Jasmine. Peer Advisors are unavailable during campus official holidays/breaks. Peer Advisors are available for more general questions.
Topics you can get help with through Peer Advising?
- Help with using Assist.org for transfer courses
- Assist with choosing classes to declare major or to complete major requirements
- Support navigating which campus office to contact with questions
- Guidance in whether to make an appointment with advising staff
Mia Rose Basulto: miabasulto@berkeley.edu
Faculty Major Advisor and Director of Undergraduate Studies:
What are the differences between the Faculty Major Advisor (FMA), the Director of Undergraduate Studies (DUS), and the Undergraduate Major Advisors (UMA)? Good question, and here some answers:
The Undergraduate Major Advisors are here to help you with the rules and requirements of the English major and minor: only the UMAs have access to the student systems that carry out the technical and administrative processing of your records. The UMAs are the people you must go to in order to declare the major officially. You should also go to them for help with articulating community college courses, petitioning to transfer courses from other departments or schools, and questions about department deadlines and schedules.
The Faculty Major Advisor is here for different reasons and needs that you may have. The FMA can serve as an intellectual mentor for the academic year. What being an “intellectual mentor” means is that the FMA is happy to talk with you about your intellectual interests, classes that fulfill or supplement those interests, academic and curricular choices more generally, possible study after college—and more. If you have a question that the FMA cannot answer, they can usually refer you to another source. Particularly if you have not already found a faculty mentor from among the teachers of your classes—but even if you have—please feel free to contact and visit the FMA for their expert guidance.
For the academic year of 2024-2025, the department’s FMA is David Landreth (dlandreth@berkeley.edu). His office hours for advising are Tuesdays from 2:30-3:30.
The Director of Undergraduate Studies, Kathleen Donegan (english_dus@berkeley.edu), welcomes you to the department and is here to discuss the same issues as the FMA and to offer you similar sorts of guidance. In addition, like the UMAs, the DUS can answer the questions you have about the details and requirements of the major or minor (but she cannot process your electronic records). She makes the decisions on student petitions for transferring courses from other departments and schools and can therefore advise you on that subject. Finally, the DUS can also talk to you about the department course offerings for the current academic year and possibly the next. Students are encouraged to drop in on her office hours, email her for an appointment, or ask questions by email.